“Hey Mom, can I take a picture of myself?”

“What?” She turned from her computer.

I the keys of the laptop, still not believing it was there. Or that it was not there a week ago. “Take a picture with the webcam.”

“Right now? Here?”

“Yes,” I replied, stretching out the “e”.

“Well I guess, but block out our house. We don’t want people seeing our house.”

“Can I do this then?” I showed her how I blocked out the sides with my hands.

“Sure.” She turned back to the computer.

I quickly took it and a crazy caption on to it, and went on to do my homework. But then, my ear buds pinged with the sound of a new notification.

I clicked over to the tab and smiled. Henry Lau, who I only had seen at my birthday, had commented.

[StringsRule: OH MY GOD GIRL. YOU LOOK SO BEAUTIFUL! Your face has cleared up!]

Oh yeah, my acne. Did I tell you guys that? It’s horrible. I think Henry only remembers the times he’s seen me with red, painful bumps scattered across my face. But now, it’s that time of the month, so my face had cleared up.

Unfortunately, since it’s that time of the month, it’ll probably come back after a few days. Like every month.

[YaSon: Thanks! But it’s temporary ya know. Not like your face.]

[StringsRule: Don’t worry, it’ll be gone, just like mine. Do you want some face cream? I use it and it REALLY helps. But seriously girl, you’re beautiful. Like the song they’re playing on the radio these days.]

I immediately thought of One Direction, who had been being played constantly on the radio. Besides Justin Bieber’s Boyfriend. I had managed to remember the chorus now, since the lyrics of the song constantly slipped from my head, even though it was so catchy and it had my approval.

“Baby you light up my world, like nobody else, the way that you flip your hair gets me overwhelmed, but when you smile at the ground, it ain’t hard to tell, you don’t know, oh oh, you don’t know that you’re beautiful.”

That’s like, the first stanza of the chorus, maybe? I don’t know. But it’s a really good song. I mean, One Direction is British and all, and there’s probably resentment about that (and seriously, why are two guys in the group not featured at all in the music video?) but they are still really good.

I smiled.

[YaSon: Thanks! Hey gtg. Sleep is calling me. Catch ya later!]

Even when my eyes adjusted the darkness as I lay in bed that night, I couldn’t get rid of the thought that a guy had just called me beautiful. Even if it was a guy who teased me about my incompetence in video games and liked hanging out with Jeanine too.

It’s amazing how guy friends can drive up your self-esteem.

*

Btw guys, I’m a String, if you couldn’t tell by this chapter. But the friend represented in this chapter is scarily similar to Henry. Like I’m not kidding. His dad comes from Hong Kong and his mom is Taiwanese, but he relates to himself as a Taiwanese (I’m not sure if he was born there). He also plays the violin and piano (although not crazy good like Henry).

All I need is him to join Break Dancing club.

JUST KIDDING. I’m not going to make him do that. Although he’s almost under my command since “Jeanine” doesn’t do any clubs afterschool (I don’t think sports count) and he wants to join a lot.

And NO, I don’t like him. He’s just one of the coolest guys I’ve ever met. Let’s put it this way: At our middle school, like no Chinese kids. I was the only Chinese kid in my grade until 8^th grade when some trombone expert moved there, and he couldn’t speak Chinese. (Still only Chinese girl :P) It was weird because all the grades above had a bunch of Chinese people, and I think below as well. Just not mine.

Anyway, I somewhat knew him because he was in orchestra, and some of my really great friends were also in orchestra and saying how he was so cool and stuff like that. Like we didn’t have a lot to talk about since we were just mutual friends and he was a grade lower. (Yeah…)

Until the day I was trying to teach a friend how to say happy new year in Chinese. Her parents know Chinese, but trust me, it’s still a hard task to get the pronunciation right. As I was repeated it for the fiftieth time, he, who happened to be walking in front, turned around and called me a bad thing in Chinese.

I’m pretty sure if I translated what he said to you guys, I would have to mark this story mature content. Which I won’t.

But yeah. We became good friends, trying to work out Chinese stuff at school when we had to, making Asian jokes, and now acne problems. And we have good memories of sitting next to each other on the bus to Hershey Park (and him changing while I gave him so privacy, only to see later my other friends freak out after they figured out he was changing XD) and running half an hour to see each other (ugh houses in suburban Maryland are SO far away). Funny story. Anyway Onwards!